By Chris Hill, SDMEA Director of Municipal Electric Services HOMETOWN - Brookings
Paul Melby
This month we are celebrating a retirement as well as giving you a little insight into Brookings Municipal Utilities. First off, I want to discuss a man who I thought was a great person from the first time I met him. Having said that, the first time I met Paul Melby was at my
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interview for the position of the Director of Electric Services for the SDMEA. I walked in fifteen minutes early to my interview and expected to see my interviewers within minutes. When Paul and Todd Chambers (Watertown) walked in 45 minutes later, Mr. Melby said, and I quote, “Sorry we are late, I had to bail my wife out of jail”. Now, like I said, this was the first time that I had met Paul and I wasn’t 100% sure how to read him at this point. I know now he was checking his wife out of the hotel in Pierre which caused the delay.
I have had several conversations with Paul since then and I hope to contact him with questions that I will have even after he retires. However, I will respect his time and let him travel and enjoy his retirement rather than hassling him with my lack of experience. Paul has assembled a close knit team of Dale Henderschiedt, Construction Supervisor, and Tim Reuter, Maintenance Supervisor, that have implemented several great things in his 16-year career at BMU, including an upgrade of the transmission system to 115KV, converting from overhead distribution to total underground, looping substations, transitioning from hand read meters to AMR (which will be 75% completed at the end of this year). Paul’s team also organized a joint construction crew which took over the construction of the telecommunication circuits as well as electric underground conductors which were previously two separate departments. BMU uses voltage reduction rather than load management for load control. BMU uses their SCADA to
SOUTH DAKOTA MUNICIPALITIES
